Please disallow the Numen background in Eerie Moon. If people can drop 5 points at character creation into having a background equivalent to Spirit Vessel, it's going to be a kick in the pants for all of the people who weren't permitted to purchase Numen.

I really don't like the addition of Wyld Prophets 'from the hip' rules. From the hip is actually in the book, and shouldn't be given extra difficulty when some people might just be really good at doing that.

Macaria should be able to pass the blunt around without the possibility of failure, just due to her ability in the Rituals arena. Can this be reconsidered?

Is there a reason that Silver Claws can't take a Garou above their maximum Rage? Because that's part of why the Gift is such a double-edged sword. If you try to stack too much, you might lose your cool and frenzy. I know that some characters have a lockdown on that, but still.

I agree with everything Justin said accept the Numen thing, and the Silver claws thing. I think Numen is completly acceptable if ruled on responsible by the STs. I understand the spirit of not wanting an ahroun to charge up 20 rage before a combat and then jump in. I am ok if the rule goes away though ;)

Suggestions, since I don't want to complain and not throw out possible answers.

Numen: I'm just looking to avoid the use of crazy powers at character creation like spirits tend to have. A responsible ST can stop most uses that would be inappropriate, but it remains unfair to those people who have been disallowed from purchasing Numen.

Silver Claws: Max + 3 is a pretty common thing. Just be like "If you gain more Rage than your max out of combat, powers that stop frenzy shut off."

If a super-powerful Merit or Background is made available at character creation only, it can really tip things out of balance for those who already have characters and cannot access the mighty things other people can. It creates an unbridgeable gulf in the 'arms race' so to speak.

Kewl. I think that's the last question I had, as I sent most of mine to the STs last night.

IMHO, the whole leet powerz at chargen thing isn't too big a deal. There's always going to be certain templates that are better than others, and no one PC should have access to everything.

I get the need to try and reign in some of the crack that could be made available to starting PCs, but in the end, there's always going to be *some* imbalance. It's just a matter of how much of an alteration you wanna make to the system before it's not really the system anymore.

This is for freebies: Soyala has been involved in a personal plot for six or so months now that could have netted him a Numen, but the new house rules will nix that. Meh. No worries. I'll work towards something else.

While there's always going to be imbalance, the idea that all PCs shouldn't have access to all stuff isn't actually what the concern is here. The concern, to me, is that people were actively disallowed this thing for a good long time.

In other news.

Numen are actually with you from a very young age, so it sounds like Soyala might have been netting a Spirit Familiar instead.

Ice-Hide is underpowered. I have never taken a bashing wound at EM. Let's make it soak one wound instead. Lethal/Bashing/Aggravated. It's an intermediate and should at least compliment its weakness of being vulnerable to fire. Double damage from fire really? It's neat thematically, but pretty silly.

First off, on Silver Claws and Rage going over your max. There are rules for talking about your Rage going over your max. If you are worried about someone with certain powers being immune to their rage (like shell, and unicorn's grace) and then using Silver Claws to build up 100 rage, then go into combat and dump, remember a few things.At that much rage, their rage will overbid their willpower for the Frenzy challenge. So as soon as they drop the power holding back their rage, so they can actually spend it, they will pretty much auto frenzy. Also, capping it at double your max would be alittle more reasonable than just saying you can't do it at all.Then it's at least a thing you can do, but it won't get too out of control, and will still likely make the user frenzy when the time comes.

Now on the Numen thing.The only valid argument i've heard against it is that it is unbalanced compared to an advanced Gift (Spirit Vessel).Yeah, we didn't all know about everything in the book when we first started to play, so we didn't get access to it. Oh well, that's the case for nearly half the books and half the shit in them.The real problem with that, is that WW created stuff that can only be bought at character creation, which is really unbalancing. Numen is just the third edition version of Spirit Familiar, and imo should be treated as such. It's better written up than Spirit Familiar, making the mechanics clearer. It saw we just replace Spirit Familiar with that, let it be bought after character gen, because it really doesn't make sense that you'd only be able to make a spirit deal to gain the service of said spirit at the birth of the child.Everywhere else you can bind spirits to your service all the time, doing alot of what Numen says, so this doesn't make alot of sense really.

But, the argument about balance with an advanced gift is pretty valid imo.Letting PCs start with something at character gen that is as good as Elder Gifts is a problem....

But...we already do it all the time. The point of having a Numen use Reform for the user was brought up.

But people have Reform fetishes, and reform is better than an elder Gift, The Elder Strider "Gift Gate of the Moon". This gift requires that the Elder Strider spend one gnosis per 100 miles they travel for their instantaneous moon bridge. So for 1000 miles it requires them 10 Gnosis.Reform lets you go anywhere, for free if it's a fetish that you chop to activate. And what level are these fetishes? Are they even 5s? I've been told NO to making fetishes even at level 5 that mimic elder gifts....yet Reform is BETTER than a TRIBE SPECIFIC Elder gift and that's alright? Yet Numen is no good?

I say, that Reform is apart of how a Spirit exists. They are non-physical beings, and exist of ephemeral materials. Hence they can send their consciousness ahead, and "REFORM" their bodies out of other ephemeral materials in the Umbra. Garou shouldn't be able to do this, and certainly shouldn't be doing something better than an Elder gift for much less of the cost. I would support just saying that Garou can't use "Reform" at all because their existence doesn't support it.

Also people try to twist Webwalker into being better than Gate to the Moon, yet the books talk about how the "Pattern Web" doesn't extend much past the cities. It's not wherever there is weaver tech, it's where the Weaver has dominance. Just because you have cellphone signal someplace, doesn't mean the Weaver has dominance there. The idea of traveling to any phone/cellphone, is actually an Elder Glasswalker gift called Phone Travel. So Webwalker shouldn't be better than that gift either.

So if you are going to use the argument that lower level powers shouldn't be mimicing Elder Gifts (which I actually agree with), than I can think of a dozen things off the top of my head that need to be reigned in, besides Numen, that try an mimic Elder Powers.

A Numen is a spirit that's bound to a child at birth. Weather or not that child changes and becomes Garou, the Numen is supposed to serve the child in return for it's protection. It also usually serves as the child's kin-fetch. It's a stronger bond than a normal kin-fetch though.

A kin-fetch is a spirit Garou use to keep track of their Kinfolk, and hopefully alert a nearby Sept if it turns out they have their First Change and weren't kin after all. They've been known to lose track of the child they're assigned to, and in some cases they look over a family instead of one child. Like I said above, a Numen can act as a kin-fetch, but most Garou don't have a Numen.

As for the non-PC run Caerns in the game, they exist, certain characters know about them and some don't and the best way to find out about them would likely be to ask other PC's about what other Caerns are like and where they might be. It's up to them to tell you the truth or anything at all.

Actually, you can spend Rage while Unicorn's Grace is up. You don't have to drop it, and thus don't have to chance the auto-frenzy the way it's written. The MET translation just says that it limits how much additional Rage you can spend by your Social Traits instead of your Physical Traits. It also says it doesn't work while the Garou is in Crinos form. Which I'd suggest be extended to Hispo, just so the +8 trait, two Agg bite of that form doesn't just become the better option anyways. I believe in the past Eerie Moon was using the section of the tabletop version that the Rage they spend be limited by their Empathy. I don't actually think that's a bad idea.

I also agree Reform, Materialize, and those sort of "almost every sort of spirit in existence" powers be excluded from the things you're able to borrow from your Numen. I specifically didn't mention Airt-Sense, because you can borrow that from a Familiar Spirit at a high enough level, and so it would seem silly to me to limit that on a Numen.

Really, there's a lot of things I didn't know about when I made my first character, or even my second. I think it's a silly argument to limit it from future PC's just because nobody's noticed it till recently. If there's a better argument that hasn't been mentioned above, maybe my mind could be changed.